Summary

Our Score

9/10

Review Price free/subscription

Photoshop Elements 8

The new version of Photoshop Elements launches with a similar splash screen to Premiere Elements. However, the Organizer has been part of the photo editing app for a few versions. The video-related enhancements have been carried over to Photoshop Elements 8. However, these video options are only available if you have Premiere Elements 8 installed. If you don't, you will be prompted to install it, or a trial version. Otherwise, you won't be able to use these functions.

The face recognition system has been improved, but tagging your photos still involves a fair amount of user input.

The Auto-Analyzer available in Premiere Elements also extends to Photoshop Elements, providing similar tagging information about overall quality, with similar drawbacks. The facial recognition system has also been extended and strengthened. The new People Recognizer includes more powerful algorithms, which can be trained to provide greater accuracy. Sadly, this requires a fair amount of user input to ensure the correct names are associated with particular faces. The software does begin to suggest possibilities as more recognition data has been accumulated, but it frequently misses faces that are not turned straight towards the camera, and will sometimes pick up objects that aren't faces at all. Fortunately, there's a new tag entry field which drops down a list of existing tags, and makes it easier to add more.

The Organizer will now let you access a selection of adjustments when in Full Screen mode. These include the Quick Edit and Quick Organize menus. The options available are still relatively limited, though, involving automatic image adjustments. So the Organizer is even better for quick fixes than with previous versions. But it's still no match for the main Editor application, which packs some of the most powerful tools of any image editing app at this price.

The preview mode lets you click through a grid of possibilities so you can find the one you like more easily.

Some of this power has been rendered easier to access via the Quick Fix Previews. Instead of adjusting the sliders until you see a result you like, the Previews present a grid of nine different options you can simply click on to see more clearly in the main screen. This way, you can rapidly find the look you want without really knowing how to use the effect's parameters.